SENGOKU: ROAD TO UNIFICATION 1.2.0 - PLAYER GUIDE
Created by Heisenberg

Unite Japan: hold all 38 provinces. You lose if your last province falls
or a third succession breaks the clan.

The desktop edition is for one player; the computer leads the other
clans. Multi-Player games, with other people online, are played in the
browser edition at https://games.theiguru.au/sengoku/ - both editions
have the same rules, screens and music.


STARTING A CAMPAIGN

  Continue          the campaign as it was at the end of the last month
                    played (shown when there is an autosave).
  New campaign      choose a scenario, a clan and how fierce your rivals
                    are, then confirm.
  Quick start       Oda Nomura, 1560, rivals Normal.
  Load campaign     one of your five save slots, or Import from a file.
  How to play       the rules below, in the game.

  Scenarios
    1560  The age of rivals: 28 clans, one province or more each.
    1582  The late wars: the Oda hold the heart of Japan.

  Rivals
    Gentle    rivals seldom march
    Easy      rivals march now and then
    Normal    rivals march when they are strong
    Hard      rivals march often
    Ruthless  rivals march at every chance


THE MAIN SCREEN

  The four panels show the selected province (top left), your lord
  (middle left), the map (top right) and the governor of the selected
  province (bottom left).

  Click a province on the map, or use the arrow keys, to see it. Tab steps
  through your own provinces. Red is your clan; the gold outline is the
  province you are looking at; the white keep beside a province number
  marks your lord's seat.

  Press 1 to 9, or click an order:
    1 Govern      cultivate, flood control, town, castle, rewards,
                  train politics, sell rice
    2 Military    hire, train, invade
    3 Diplomacy   alliance, incite uprising
    4 Provinces   a list of all 38
    5 Chronicle   the campaign's history
    6 Settings    music on or off, volume
    7 Help        how to play
    8 Campaign    save, load, new campaign, title screen, quit
    9 End month
  Esc opens the campaign menu. Each order asks for an amount or a target
  when it needs one, and asks for confirmation before it runs.
  Alt+Enter switches to full screen.


ORDERS

  Orders are given in your own provinces and cost the governor body points
  (BP); 10 BP are always kept for defence. BP return each month with the
  governor's politics.

  Cultivate land raises the rice harvest; flood control guards against
  typhoons; develop town raises trade and gold; reinforce castle helps in
  battle; give rewards raises support and loyalty; train politics makes a
  better governor; sell rice turns rice into gold at the market price.

  Hire soldiers costs 1 gold and 10 people per soldier; a province holds at
  most 100. Train soldiers raises their skill.

  Propose alliance: a clan that agrees will not attack you, nor you them,
  for 12 months. Incite uprising sends a ninja to lower a rival's support;
  it cannot be used against an ally.


THE SEASONS

  In month 3 (spring) gold comes in from trade; in month 9 (autumn) the
  rice harvest. Soldiers eat into both. Typhoons strike in summer, and
  unhappy provinces rise up.


YOUR LORD AND HIS SEAT

  Your lord governs from his seat. If the seat falls, he escapes to
  another of the clan's provinces. If he dies, an heir succeeds him; a
  third succession breaks the clan. A captured province gets a governor
  of its own.


BATTLES

  Invade a bordering province from Military. Your three units (red
  banners) face the defenders. C is cavalry, I is infantry and R is
  rifles; the pennant (*) marks a commander.

  Click one of your units, then click an empty hex to move or a
  neighbouring enemy to attack. Keys: arrows move the cursor, Enter acts,
  Tab picks the next unit.

  1 Attack, 2 Rifle fire, 3 Charge choose how the next attack is made.
  Rifles hit hard without being struck back, but must reload: move or wait
  before firing again. A charge hits twice as hard and is struck back twice
  as hard. W waits; infantry who wait lie in ambush and strike double.

  Cavalry move two clear hexes in a straight line. Forests protect,
  mountains block, and a weakened defender shelters in the castle. Destroy
  the enemy commander to win. Each side eats rice every three days; the
  defender wins after 90 days. X withdraws.


SAVING

  Campaign > Save keeps up to five campaigns; the previous save of a slot
  is kept as .bak. The game also saves itself at the end of every month
  (autosave.sav), and Continue on the title screen picks up from there;
  the autosave is removed when a campaign is won or lost. You are asked to
  save before quitting, loading or starting anew. Every line of a save is
  checked when it is loaded, so a damaged or cut-short file is refused.

  Export to a file, the last item of the Save list, writes the campaign to
  a .sav file of your choice (offered as, for example,
  sengoku-oda-1560-04.sav). Import from a file, the last item of the Load
  list, opens one and plays it; as with Load, you are asked to save
  unsaved changes first. An export is a copy to keep or move; it does not
  count as a save of the campaign.

  Saves are kept in the "saves" folder of
    Linux:   ~/.config/Sengoku - Road to Unification/
    Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Sengoku - Road to Unification\
  as slot1.sav to slot5.sav and autosave.sav. Music settings are kept in
  options.ini in the folder above.

  Saves are in format 3, the same text format as the browser edition.
  Saves from earlier releases (formats 1 and 2) still load. The browser
  edition has Export and Import too: a file exported there imports here,
  and the reverse, so a campaign can move between the browser and the
  desktop.


MUSIC

  An original looping tune on the Japanese five-note "in" scale. Settings
  turns it off or sets its volume. On Linux it plays through pw-play,
  paplay or aplay, whichever is installed.


GNU GPL version 2 or later. Copyright (C) 2026 Michael Slater.
Provided WITHOUT WARRANTY. See COPYING and NOTICE.txt.
